


Prompt: The Travelling Lemon

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [75]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Codependency, Gen, Travelling Lemon, avengers fluff, silliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-20
Updated: 2016-05-20
Packaged: 2018-06-09 16:27:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6914638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re not entirely sure where the game originates, just that Clint comes to the facility one day with a lemon and a very odd look on his face. Natasha’s reaction, they suppose, should have been warning enough.</p><p>“Travelling Lemon?” she asks, as Clint bounces the citrus between his hands. Clint’s matching grin, they later think, should also have been a warning.</p><p>Three hours later, when Clint is sitting talking with them, the lemon bounces off the back of his head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prompt: The Travelling Lemon

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt on my tumblr, readable [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/144668582360/yes-i-like-that-idea-of-them-playing-a-game). The Travelling Lemon game is from _Cabin Pressure_.

**i.**  
They’re not entirely sure where the game originates, just that Clint comes to the facility one day with a lemon and a very odd look on his face. Natasha’s reaction, they suppose, should have been warning enough.

“Travelling Lemon?” she asks, as Clint bounces the citrus between his hands. Clint’s matching grin, they later think, should also have been a warning.

Three hours later, when Clint is sitting talking with them, the lemon bounces off the back of his head.

“The fruitbowl, Clint? Really?” Natasha says.

Clint grins even wider. “Really. Want to go again?”

They both cast a glance around the very confused room before she says, “Steve. I’ll play against Steve.”

“What.” Steve’s voice is absolutely deadpan. “Guys, I don’t even know what this game is.”

The smile Natasha gives is _evil_. One hand lifts up the lemon. “This is the Travelling Lemon. I hide it someplace ordinary and in sight, you have to find it, retrieve it, and get it back to me before a deadline.”

“That doesn’t sound so hard,” Sam says. 

Natasha’s grin only gets wider. “ _Sounds_  does not mean _is_. As it’s your first time how about the deadline of… a week?”

 

* * *

 

**ii.**  
Cap does not find the lemon for six of the seven days. Indeed, he does not find it until it is very nearly shot off his head in the middle of a skirmish with a rogue branch of HDYRA somewhere in Ohio. 

The team, around him, is trying very hard not to laugh.

“Why,” he says, when the fight is done and he has marched over to them, helmet in hand, “Was there a lemon strapped to my head. _How_  was there a lemon taped to my helmet. _Why did no one tell me when we were on the Quinjet?”_

The twins are holding each other up, Rhodey has locked the legs of his suit and Sam is leaning against Vision who, while looking bemused, isn’t nearly as affected as the rest. 

“It’s against the rules,” Natasha says, taking the lemon from the helmet. “Now. Who are you going up against?”

Wanda flicks her fingers, scarlet dancing out like smoke. “Pick me and I will read it from your mind.”

Beside her Pietro grins. “It would take me less than a minute to check the building.”

Rhodey shrugs, Vision still looks bemused. Sam is laughing too hard to respond. 

“Right,” Steve says. “Sam. You have three days from when we get back to find the damned lemon.”

Somehow, Rhodey manages to choke out, “ _Language_.”

 

* * *

 

 **iii.**  
Clint, Natasha and the twins spot the lemon’s new hiding place within about an hour. Within another hour, Vision and Rhodey have spotted it as well. When Stark ambles into the common area that evening and spots it, there is a rather hurried explanation.

“Why is there a lemon on the lamp?”

“Travelling Lemon,” Clint says, with great glee. “Cap versus Falcon, right now.”

Stark looks _incredibly_  confused. Natasha sighs.

“There is a lemon,” she says, pointing to the lemon that is badly balanced atop the fluorescent light. “It is hidden in plain sight by Person A. Person B has a set amount of time to find it in.”

Stark spins the wrench in his hand absentmindedly. “When did this start?” he asks, sounding half-offended. “And why didn’t anyone tell me about this?”

 

* * *

 

 **iv.**  
Sam finds it during dinner, after Steve’s eyes dart to the light one too many times. 

“The _light_  Steve, _really_?” he asks. “The room would have started to smell of lemons! It would have given it away! That was terrible.”

Steve sounds slightly offended when he replies, “No worse than Natasha’s idea.”

Pietro is grinning when as he says, “Much worse. You could have hidden it on the shelves in his room-”

“Or in the fridge,” Wanda adds.

“Or with the plastic fruit in the Agent’s lounge-”

“Or on his gear-”

“Or in the training room-”

“I get the idea!” Steve doesn’t seem angry, only slightly perturbed.

“It is Sam’s turn, then?” Wanda asks, glancing to where Sam is settling into his seat again, gathering up a forkful of rice. “Who will you go against?”

There is a pause in the meal, no one even lifting a fork as Sam glances over the table. “Clint and Nat know the game,” he says. “Steve’s already a failure. You’d cheat,” he says, pointing his fork at Wanda. “And so would you-” his fork is jabbed in Pietro’s direction. “Viz could scan a room in seconds…” His eyes continue over the gathered team.

“Oh no,” Rhodey says. “No. I refuse.”

“The Travelling Lemon,” Steve says, deadpan, “Is now officially a training exercise. All new recruits, if asked to participate, must.”

“ _Damnit_ ,” Rhodey says.

Tony passes him a fresh beer.

 

* * *

 

 **v.**  
When the twins see Rhodey for training the next morning it is very hard to hold in a laugh at the sight of the lemon sellotaped over his chest repulsor. 

“What?” he asks. 

“Nothing,” Pietro says, sprinting off in a blur of giggling blue. 

“Did you get a paintjob?” Wanda asks, scarlet spiralling out from her fingers.

“What?” Rhodey asks. “No? Why do you ask?”

Wanda bites her lip but doesn’t manage to hide her smile as she says, “No reason.”

(Rhodey only notices at the end of training, and immediately marches off to bean Sam over the head with the lemon. Sam’s response - “ _Ow_ ” - is immediately turned into a wide grin when Rhodey tells him where he plans to hide the lemon for Tony.)

 

* * *

 

 **vii.**  
“The rules dictate you’re supposed to hide it in _plain sight_ ,” Natasha says, when Tony finally gets the lemon out of his suit, having gotten grease and oil over most of the main room of their quarters in doing so.

“It was!” Rhodey insists, gesturing with his beer from where he’s perched on the table. “Tony knows that suit like the back of his hand; hide anything inside of it and he’ll find it in a nanosecond. He’s like the Princess and the goddamn Pea with it.”

Natasha’s eyes narrow. 

“Spirit of the rules,” Rhodey points out. “Not the letter.”

“He’s got a point,” Tony says, bouncing the lemon in one hand. “I think it counts.”

Natasha’s fingers tap on her bottle. “All right,” she says. “So who are you playing against?”

Tony’s eyes dart over the gathered group. “Vision,” he says eventually. “Want a go?”

Vision blinks several times, the lenses in his eyes visibly setting and resetting before, “I don’t see why not,” is said. “What is the time limit?”

The lemon is turned over in Tony’s hand. “Three days, again?”

 

* * *

 

 **viii.**  
Vision very nearly doesn’t find the lemon in time, but as Natasha points out, that isn’t entirely his fault.

“ _Plain sight_ ,” she says, waving the lemon in Tony’s face. “ _Not_  hidden in Dummy’s wiring!”

“It was visible!” Tony says. “You could see the yellow!”

“From one angle! If you were underneath it!”

“And Viz can phase through the floor, of course he was going to find it!”

“I did find it,” Vision points out. “Though if you wish to apply penalties to Mr. Stark I have no objection.”

Tony looks very slightly offended.

“Who will you play against?” Wanda asks, fingers tapping over the fabric of the stool she’s sat on. “Almost everyone has had a go.”

Vision turns the lemon over consideringly, the yellow bright against his magenta skin, almost matching the bright yellow of the stone in his brow. “I... do not know if it would be fair, if I were to play. I can map rooms incredibly quickly, and well...” he pauses, glances to Natasha. “The lemon must be _retrieved_ , correct?” Natasha nods. “I could very easily win by phasing the lemon halfway into a wall, and then nobody would win.”

“So...?” Pietro asks, and his hands have to move in a blur to catch the lemon tossed to him.

“You two have a go,” Vision suggests. “No one will try to test you with it, because of how easily you could find it, but for you to _hide_  it, possibly from the whole team... I think that would be a fair challenge.”

 

* * *

 

 **ix.**  
“You can’t levitate the lemon behind people’s heads!” Clint says when he arrives a week later to find the twins winning by a wide margin of what he calls cheating. 

(Natasha termed it “target practice”.)

“The rules only said that it had to be hidden in plain sight and where it can be retrieved,” Pietro says.

“Therefore,” Wanda finishes. “This is not against the rules.”

Clint’s hand darts out, grabs the lemon from where it was hovering just behind and above Vision’s head. 

“Right,” he says. “We’re restarting. Why don’t we ask Helen if she’d like to join in?”

 

* * *

 

 **x.**  
Wanda and Pietro watch Helen with something approaching gleeful awe. 

“So,” Pietro says, hand up fingers splayed. “Let us check this.”

“Your plan,” Wanda says, “To hide the lemon-”

“Is to grow a whole new _tree_?” They both sound somewhere between outraged and about to break out into laughter.

“That is half of the plan,” Helen says. “The other half I need your help with.”

 

* * *

 

 **xi.**  
They plant the Cradle-made lemon tree in the grounds, in the small grove some of the Agents have lunch. Pietro’s speed allows the hole to be dug for the roots in record time, and with Wanda lifting the tree and redirecting everyone’s attention no one sees their blurred forms on the grounds at dusk as the tree is set into place.

“A week,” Pietro says, “Probably longer.”

Wanda grins. “Helen is going to win.”

 

* * *

 

 **xii.**  
Clint’s first words when he next visits them are: “Since when has there been a lemon tree on the grounds?”

The team, glancing to each other, glancing to where Helen is sat calmly with a tablet in the corner, ignoring the twins quietly grinning, immediately sprint outside.

“WHERE IS IT?” is Sam’s parting yell before they’re all out the door, and the twins burst out laughing.

Helen, finally setting down her tablet, finally cracks into a wide smile.

“... Wait,” Clint says. “Did I just ruin a round of Travelling Lemon?”

Pietro rises and pats Clint on the shoulder. “It is hard to ruin a round that has lasted two and a half weeks.”

“What.”

Helen’s smile gets even wider. “I made the lemon a new tree.”

Clint has to sit down.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are much appreciated!


End file.
